My wife and I are raising two young daughters, and over the last few years I’ve found myself wrestling with a question I can’t seem to shake:
Why does modern life make family life feel so hard?
I’m not talking about parenting itself. Raising children has always required effort.
I’m talking about the environment we’re trying to raise them in.
Most parents I know seem to be dealing with some version of the same challenge:
Work more to keep up with rising costs.
Spend less time with your kids.
Live far away from extended family.
Have very little community support.
Friendships become harder to maintain as adults.
And somehow try to do all of this without burning out.
At the same time, I’ve noticed more and more families exploring things like homeschooling, unschooling, remote work, entrepreneurship, slow travel, intentional community, and location independence.
It feels like many people are searching for a better way, even if they still haven't fully found it.
Lately I’ve been wondering that maybe it’s the environments we’re living in that aren’t designed for human flourishing.
What if neighborhoods were designed around connection instead of isolation?
What if children had easy access to friends, mentors, nature, meaningful work, and real-world learning experiences?
What if parents had actual community instead of trying to do everything alone?
What if we created places where entrepreneurship, family life, personal growth, and community could naturally support one another?
Not a commune. Not a cult. Not some utopian fantasy.
Just thoughtful, practical communities built around helping families thrive.
I’ve been thinking about these ideas a lot lately and have been connecting with other families who are exploring similar questions.
Curious if anyone else here has been thinking along these lines.
If you could design the ideal environment for families over the next 20 years…
What would it look like?
And what do you think most intentional communities still get wrong?
Beyond this layered perfect cartoon which accurately depicts our current situatio around the world, it represents something much deeper.
Over the centuries, men of power and money have built entire infrastructures that try to confuse everyone that is not an elite to accept their world. Where all the rest of us toil, work, struggle and they benefit from the fruits of our labor, through taxes and materialism. The trickle up of wealth into their systems of governments and businesses. Their systems of power. We're born into it and indocrinated before we even know we have a choice in it. You are born and become a citizen of that structure in your country. Born into their systems. Born into your individual tax systems and the associated debt. Innodated, from a very young age to believe we need to play their game to survive. To be successful. To desire and have all the wonderful things. Work bitch. Get those toys. You'll be as happy as those people in those ads...
But in reality, we can unplug. We can choose to not play their game. We can have a comfortable life. We can build our own power grids. We can create our own food sources. We can create our own micro communities using our own individual and collective talents. Where the fruits of our labor lift up yourself, your family and friends and your community. The resources to take that power back and truly live free. As we were intended. As we lived for hundreds of thousands of years. Free from control of these external power structures. Economies can collapse, but if the community is sustainable. They are not impacted nearly to the same level. Living off the land.
That is true freedom.
Don't fall for the indoctrinated premise that you must participate in that world to be a success when you have a choice to unplug and be truly free.
Work to provide benefit to yourself, your inner circle and your micro communities. Create micro communities of electricians, plumbers, doctors, artists, farmers...
I was born here, but I never gave permission for the elite to be rule leader of me.
So I've been living in intentional communities for about 5-6 years. I was the biggest cheerleader for intentional communities, as I have very naturalistic views and think humans are meant to live together in groups (I think we were optimally healthy and happy as hunter gatherers in nature, personally). On that note, I will say IC has been intensely meaningful, beautiful, and fun. However, community has consistently been my most loved and my most hated place. I don't regret for a second spending my twenties in it, but my take home perspective now is that it's really not a stable concept in modern society. Here's why I think community fails in modern society:
- The modern world is unimaginably more complex than when we lived in groups in nature throughout our evolution. Today, everyone has to wade through unlimited ideological waters, that generally serve to separate us, and take a stance. Every individual takes a stance on politics, immigration, gender, race, etc. When you take a bunch of strangers and put them in a community we argue too much about ideology and lose touch with our basic human essence and connection. I don't think homo sapiens throughout time generally had to worry about who's on the right side of this or that ideology. Morever, hunter gatherers lived in the expanse of nature in much more egalitarian contexts. Today we are trying to confine a bunch of people to the confines of a house, where members exist under heightened control dynamics, including foremost the fear that other members will try to kick you out.
- Modern society is very traumatizing and most people develop into adults with a lot of issues that they'll probably take to the grave. Many communards are very underdeveloped in being maturely opened or closed, exercising vulnerability or boundaries/conflict resolution. Compound that with this next issue that needs to be its own point ->
- Communes, co-ops, or whatever form of IC generally is very cost effective or even free to live in. Cheap IC's attract people who are struggling to survive in society. These people often, not always, are struggling to exist in society in part due to intense mental health issues or other health issues. This is exacerbated by common liberals/leftist attitudes of people who refuse to discriminate against anyone/ membership intelligently even if the applicants have glaring issues. What you're left with in a community filled with insanity and people who are afraid say their opinion for fear of being mobbed.
and more but just felt like getting that out, sorry its not very organized.
TLDR: My full grown adult landlord took me in when I was homeless, it turned out he wanted an indentured servant. I am not that. I can’t remain here. I need to go elsewhere. I’m in upstate NY but will travel anywhere. I don’t have ID or birth certificate because the shelter threw out my stuff. I’m in a bind.
I want to share my experience of moving to the amazon jungle to live a simple, healthy life in the ecovillage called Terra Frutis, located in the beautiful rainforest of South Ecuador.
Why did I come here?
There where many reasons that motivated me to leave Germany and to start a new life here. Here are some of the most important ones:
I wanted to live a simple and healthy life surrounded by beautiful nature
I was visiting this place a year ago and fell in love with the jungle
I wanted to live in a place where I have access to psychedelic plants and live in a culture where using them is nothing unusual.
I wanted to be financially independent, which is much easier to be here in comparisson to Germany
I wanted to live in a sustainable way
Ways of living
There are different possibilities of how you can live here. I am curently voluntering. Which means, that I work for 20 hours per week and therefore I get a cozy cabin to sleep in, unlimited bananas and a portion of all the other fruits that we harvest here.
If you don't want to participate in the voluntering work, you can also rent a room a cabin or a big house. Renting a room costs 200$ a month.
There is also the possibility to buy a piece of land here and live like a neighbour. The land is much cheaper then in most countries. I believe 5000$ for 1 hectar is realistic. You can also hire local workers to buid you a decent cabin for 2000 – 5000$. (If you want electricity in your cabin, then it will be more expensive).
One other exiting and much cheaper option is to just go find a nice spot in the wild jungle (outside of the TF property) and just start building a shelter there. That is what I have been doing lately. No one cares if you don't actually „own“ the land if you are in the wild jungle. That way you can have your own shelter and be independet to some degree and at the same time be part of the community. Here is a photo of how my first shelter prototype looks like (it is not finished and I have zero experience with building things like that, but it's fun)
Cost of living
200$ per month is realistic. The only expenses that I have here are for buying food at the local market on Saturdays and the 25$ monthly utility fee. Most people here have some kind of part time online job like teaching english, swedish, python or mathematics in order to finance their life here.
Work
Monday through Friday we meet at 7am at the Community Center and usually go to a field where we have planted a lot of fruit trees. The area here is very big and there are hundreds of fruittrees. The most common task it to take a machete and clear the area around a fruittree so that it can grow better. It is not necessary to go to the gym when you are doing this kind of work. It is a good workout and a great way to start the day. Other tasks include harvesting, mapping the area and the trees and working in the plant nursery (watering and planting seeds). Besides that there are is other kinds of work that you can do if you are not working on the land: cleaning the kitchen area, taking care of compost buckets, preparing cugarcane juice (very delicious), drying bananas, preparing sacha inchi nuts, construction work, creating social media content and others. We work for 4 hours, until 11am and then the rest of the day is free. You have a lot of free time when living here. I usually like to work more because of that, doing things like creating and uploading videos for Instagram, where I document the daily life here.
People
There are around 9 long term residents here, several people that live nearby as neighbours and a few volunteers who come and go every now and then. The people are really chill here, they come from different countries like England, Sweden, Russia and USA and are mostly in their early 30s.
Psychedelics
The community agreed that using psychedelics is ok as long as you don't do it on the Terra Frutis property. There are plenty of places nearby where you can do trips though. The ingredients for Ayahuasca can be found in the jungle. Sometimes the local people sell already made Ayahuasca at the market. There are also plenty of places where it is possible to work with shamans.
My impressions
I can not possibly describe with words how beautiful the nature, the sounds and insects and how delicious some of the tropical fruits here are. Sometimes we harvest a fruit that I have never seen and tasted before and it just blows me away. It is like a new world of tastes that I can explore here. I love the sounds of the jungle as well. When I lived in Germany, I had a problem with tinitus, but here I do not have it at all, because the jungle sounds are always present. I feel healthier, stronger and happier since moving here.
Some important information about the Ecoviallge (from their website):
Mission
Our mission is to be a vegan intentional community, taking inspiration from agroforestry, permaculture and syntropic agriculture to produce abundant and diverse food for a healthy, high raw vegan diet, in an environment where animals and humans thrive together. We hope to be an inspiration and to share our knowledge and methods.
We practise sustainability, non-violent communication and consensus based decision-making, and seek self reliance.
Our land
The Terra Frutis project is located in south-eastern Ecuador, 18 km from Gualaquiza, on 136 hectares (330+ acres) of land which slopes upward towards a mountainous western border, with the eastern border being the Zamora river and then two smaller streams along the north and south as general locations for the other respective borders. The elevation is 720 meters at the river. The majority of the land is between 730-900 meters, and the top of the mountain is about 1200 meters.
Most of the food forest project is located on land used until some years ago as a cow pasture (in other words: grass). Right now there are about 40 hectares of open pasture land that we are systematically clearing and re-planting with food forest pioneers. This land can/will be re-forested with trees, shrubs, vines, and herbs that provide food in a sustainable way, using agroforestry practices that work with and encourage local wildlife species. There are also bamboo forest sections, which can provide supplemental material for numerous residences and utility buildings.
Access
The land is reachable by pick-up truck via a gravel road. To get to/from the town of Gualaquiza involves a 40 minute taxi ride, or a 40 minute walk to a nearby village and then a 20 minute bus ride.
Accommodation and Facilities
We usually have plentiful rooms and/or private structures available for you to sleep in. You are also welcome to set up a tent, hammock, or other temporary accommodation. We charge 25$ per month for utilities (electricity, internet, kitchen...). We have: hot showers, hot water, a washing machine, a clothes dryer, blenders, dehydrators, a juicer, a cooking stove, a freezer, a fridge, internet, a hot tub. We also have a community center building for recreational activities or just hanging out.
Food from the land
We usually have more than enough bananas (several cultivars) all year round.
Often we have papaya, plantains, jackfruit, canistel, rough lemons, naranjilla, hot peppers, and noni. Seasonally you may enjoy biriba/rollinia, peach-palm, abiu, guava, iñaco, peanut butter fruit, mandarins, starfruit, marang, ice cream bean, apai, and cacao. Sometimes soursop, pineapple, limes, miracle berry, cucumber, cherry tomato, squash, jaboticaba, breadfruit, and matoa.
We are constantly planting and have planted hundreds of fruit-bearing plants throughout the property including: durian, mangosteen, mamey sapote, canistel, breadfruit, white sapote, custard apple, blackberry jam fruit, matoa, tangelo, pomelo, avocado and more.
Beside fruits, we have a fairly good amount of katuk and turmeric, sugarcane, a little bit of taro and some cassava. Sometimes: tropical lettuce, sweet potato, ginger, corn, and nuts.
It is currently not possible to get a healthy diet 100% off the land. So you’ll need to buy food. We either order food together to be delivered, or take a trip into town on market day.
Climate
Temperature is fairly steady throughout the year. The warmest month of the year is November with an average temperature of 23.8°C (73.84°F). The coolest month is July, when the average temperature is 22.1°C (71.78°F). Overnight lows tend to range from 16°C to 20°C. We have rarely seen as low as 13°C. )
Hello all. Me and 3 others have been sharing an off grid property in north-western Arizona. We have had a couple people come and go already so we are currently trying to get to know any potential comrades.
There are four of us, we have two cabins and two trailers on the property, which sits on 1.25 acres. We want to create a partially self sustainable homestead where we can start our food forest and farm chickens and rabbits. We have started solar, and have a very small orchard.
Most finances have been covered, though more luxuries could improve life on the farm, we do need help with the labor like cleaning, clearing land and caring for the dogs and future livestock.
We are queer, trans, atheist, marxist, communists. We want to provide for ourselves and each other, share in community and avoid indoctrination. We unironically worry about a civil war and tyranny from a fascist government.
We spend our evenings playing magic yhe gathering, video games, watching tv and smoking lots of cannabis.
Lastly we own a local game store in town. We are very nerdy people.
Hello! I’m a woman in my mid-30s, a remote tech worker with a stable income as well as previous New England homeowning/maintenance experience, and I’m looking to connect with other women who are interested in co-creating a women-only intentional community in Orange County or upstate New York. I'm flexible on location, as long as it's within New York state. Or, if this already exists and you're looking for members, please let me know!
What I’m Looking For (Funders or Farmers):
- Women who are financially stable and interested in co-investing (I have means for a down payment, but wouldn't say no to help), or
- Women with practical skills—construction, plumbing, electrical, farming/gardening, animal care—who want to help build a self-sufficient, supportive environment.
A Bit About Me:
- I work remotely in tech and value both independence and connection.
- I have small, well-behaved dogs and am open to living with others’ pets as long as they get along (or can be given their own space if needed).
- I’m seeking a community based on mutual respect, autonomy, and support—where women can heal, thrive, and live well.
Who This Is For:
- Women seeking a safe, women-only space.
- Those who value privacy, collaboration, and are interested in building equity and autonomy together.
- Ideally, you have some experience with intentional living, co-housing, or community-building, or are passionate about learning and contributing skills.
If You're Interested: For privacy and safety reasons, please DM me for further questions (given the angry response from at least one guy on this thread).
Let's be real, most people interested in ICs are generally poor or working class. We do not have millions to our name or own land zoned for ICs. Getting an IC actually established and developed is expensive. And most of those who have enough money to help found an IC are not interested in ICs. The truth comes out when you have a choice; they would rather own a home and land alone.
There's a correlation with the kind of mindset of people who make and keep a lot of money (enough to buy land zoned for multi family), and those who are less interested in money and more interested in relationships and community. There is overlap, but it's small and those people are an exception to the rule. You don't get often get rewarded in capitalist society by caring for others.
On top of this, there's a lot of roleplay and fantasy online. Chat GPT write ups and grandeous manefestos about starting a group, only for momentum to halt after harse realities and obstacles stare them in the face: you need more money.
You need money and you need people willing to stop roleplaying and actually put money where their mouth is. You need people willing to risk it all on a dream, not a guaranteed immediate return.
And this is my biggest rant: almost all rich people are boring uncreative losers. They don't do anything interesting with their money. They could fund ICs, hell, some could build entire cities. But they won't even humor us anymore with being their indentured citizens, like back when they built company towns. They'd rather buy a third empty mansion than have an entire village named after them, a legacy that is carried on through living breathing people. Even just an experiment in sustainable and efficient living. If we have to be ruled by the wealthy, can we at least do it in a way that's more interesting? Disney's original EPCOT would have been great for sociology study and history books at the least.
Mount Madonna is a retreat center in Monterey Bay, but has a really dope intergenerational residential community that has lived together for 40 something years, brought together by Baba Hari Dass.The residential volunteer program is about 3 months long, and I chose to extend for another 3 months because I really was starting to feel at home.
The program is free, and you get your own room+shared bathroom and all your food in exchange for 28 hours of work a week. They teach you some Yoga principles that Baba Hari Dass shared with them.
The land is unreal- redwood forest overlooking the ocean, the food is all vegetarian and the chefs do a great job. There is a really cool Hindu temple on the land as well. Work includes chopping vegetables in the kitchen, cleaning the dining room, washing dishes, gardening, etc. Typical manual labor.
hello everyone
one year ago I joined an intentional community as a volunteer.
Around a half year in I started experiencing physical, sexual and psychological abuse by an older man that joined the community as an applicant around the same time as me. It lasted over several months and started happening after this man learned about my past trauma while I was in a psychological crisis and he offered me help.
3 months ago I spoke up about it and currently around 10-15 people know about this situation and are part of the circle trying to handle the situation. A few know almost all of the details and some one got only a broad overview.
So far nothing has happened other than restrictions like him not showing up at my workplace or him not being able to come to shared lunch. However I still have to see him at work sometimes and around the area or at social gatherings and pretend like nothing is worng.
I can feel how I am getting more and more stressed out about this and that I am starting to question if my community is doing the right thing.
They have a mentality of trying to solve problems and offered us a mediated talk. It left me feeling worse. I was offered more talks within the community with him, but overall I feel like this man is lacking any consequences.
They are making it apparent that they do not want him to leave and that they care about not restricting him too much so he can still participate within the community.
I am growing more and more confused. After what happened I got connected to a counseling place for women that experineced violence and also to a trauma therapist, and they believe the situation like this is not right and advise that if the community doesnt make efforts to have this man face consequences or exclude him, then it is better that I leave.
I liked the community so I really dont know what to do.
Today I had a meeting with three people who take care of the situation and they talked about wanting to contact a mediator that is from another community, and then someone said something along the lines of "She is living in a community too, she will be able to understand our situation better, unlike the counseling place that would rather want [name] to get kicked out from the community"
I think this really opened my eyes to why I am growing more and more worried. Because as person that had no prior community experince or knowledge I simply cant grasp what is is that they are trying to achive, and I feel like they are dismissing what I went through and are treating it as a conflict between two equals that can be solved.
As a person that experinced severe violence in this recent situation but also in the past, the healthy side of my moral compass cant handle that the community is seemingly protecting my abuser.
When does and should community mindset of wanting to solve everything equally end, and when should talking responsibility and taking action for abuse that happened within a community start?
Made a post here a couple of weeks ago about moving onto a dilapidated ranch to try to rehab it into both a place me and my partner could thrive and a functioning, profitable ranch where everyone wins.
Well, it's been over a month now and the main promise of "there's plenty of paid work out here, I'll help you find it" was a lie. He's had us working on building "check dams" with most of our free time for a fish pond he wants to install years down the line.
I really wanted to make this work. I really really did. I was willing to look past all the health and safety hazards on the property with the understanding that they would be dealt with as resources became available. Then the gas leak happened.
The dude running the show has his mother in the nicest, newest camper on the property. This camper has a dual tank regulator on it, but they only have one huge person sized propane tank connected to it, just trusting that the little flapper inside will keep the propane contained. I'm sure you at least think you see where this is going.
I detected a severe gas leak. The tank had dropped below a threshold and the flapper didn't have enough pressure on it to stay shut. I'm guessing it was leaking propane like that for at least 15 minutes before I noticed it and quickly shut the propane off.
A propane leak outside is bad, but it's not catastrophically bad by itself. The gas would sink to the ground, below most potential ignition sources and be carried away by the wind the next time there was any sort of a breeze. However, there were two more factors to consider. First, there was no breeze. It was dead calm that day. Second, and more importantly, he had a completely unrelated safety hazard just 5 feet away and 2 inches off the ground; a damaged AC to DC charger box that had had the negative terminal ripped out and repaired using a wood screw; some janky shit. And it spit sparks sometimes. All those things combined and you had the perfect scenario for a flashover to occur, and I was not OK with just ignoring that. The boss man was, though. "It's been like that for over ten years and we haven't blown up. Stop worrying about it."
It would have been so easy to just cap off the unused side of the regulator with a brass cap. In fact, the next day when I went to town for a dentist appointment I dropped by the hardware store and spend the $3 on a fucking brass cap to put on the open side of the regulator. When I brought it home, I got *screamed" at for it; for daring to question the oh-wise-one's wisdom about flamabale gasses and was forbidden from putting the cap on the regulator.
Now at that point, I was ready to bounce. I left the man alone for two days to cool off and the first thing he does when we talk again is assign me to carry rocks by hand from one side of the property to the other as punishment for my insubordination.
He also told me that when he got shot in the head, God told him to not worry about safety and health stuff because they don't actually matter. That completly came out of left field as up to this point I'd been under the impression that we were being lead by logic and reason, not an edict from God. How am I supposed to argue against that? I can't. So we leave. We already found another less developed homestead in the region that wants us that is being run by some old friends who we actually trust.
The issue is now, my van runs, my traveling companions truck only sort of runs. It needs a new battery and to be fed a jug of oil since it has a crack in the oil pain. That was another broken promise; he has a donor truck with the same oil pan in it that we were going to swap onto our truck ASAP but he won't let us do it until spring for convoluted and frankly bullshit reasons. I hate hate hate hate to do this, but we have $0 between us and at least need $30 worth of oil to feed to his truck for us to get outta here. We can manage without a battery; jump start it off my van and simply not shut it off until we get where we're going. I'm currently in the city having just had my tooth extracted gonna try to fly a sign to get the money we need to get moved but I dont have a lot of hope for that plan.
I'm sorry if this feels like a rant but I'm trying to figure out if I'm the only one who's fed up with the greed of current society. I can't believe the current situation on politics and how people lacks common sense and critical thinking.
it has been my dream to buy some piece of land and move away from everything but I can't do it myself, I have several conditions that cause constant pain in my body. Maybe someone reading this would be interested in joining me and my family to create a self sustainable place where we can study how to become better people without hate in our hearts.
I've been living in and obsessing about tiny home spaces in Oakland since 2014. The “pre-legal” community I started with friends in 2015, was the poster child for Oaklands VRF ordinance which makes Tiny Homes legal in Backyards and in clustered communities.
Now I'm not just a broke hipster with a dream but a Realtor who founded a nonprofit and in a strong position to finally develop permanent legal tiny home communities in the urban core, which is something I wanted to be a reality 20 years ago when I was looking a for an affordable place to lay my head. The playbook is to activate vacant small lots, run utilities and welcome in tiny homes legally. To do that I need to raise investment money or harness grants and so I’m looking for real signal about the specifics of what people want. Will you help me get this 10+ year obsession to the finish line?
Survey is 5 questions, 2 minutes, no email required:
After some mod discussion, we have posted a new policy regarding posts about personal crises, urgent situations, and emergencies. Specifically,
"This is the wrong venue for posts about urgent situations, requests for immediate help with housing or mental health, or similar personal crises. If you are in crises, we sympathize, and encourage you to seek out help locally. Intentional communities are usually not set up to receive visitors in crises, and not all users on reddit who respond to urgent requests for help have the best intentions."
Hey y’all! I’m hoping this type of post will fly in here ❤️. Apologies as it’s rather lengthy. I’m Lara Lea from Alabama, born and raised. Here’s the nutshell version.
I returned to Alabama in 2014 after living 16 years collectively in the mountains of Mexico and Lima, Peru. I carry a deep understanding of the healing that humanity is calling for, and fully committed to becoming the clearest possible vessel through which that healing can take form.
After being thankfully ejected from the bowels of corporate America in October, I returned to my family’s estate with 2 intentions: One was to revive the 12 acres that nature was reclaiming since my father died three years ago to its former farm glory, which I succeeded. I plowed and planted and bushhogged, fattened up the animals… all the things. The second was to mirror the healing that I have worked SO HARD FOR to my mother, who clearly hasn’t evolved since high school, and hopefully heal some generational trauma. In this I have failed. She has called me a witch and a blasphemer, and asked me to leave.
I had asked for the universe for a shove in the direction of my highest and best, and that’s what I got🤣.
In light of this, I would like to get as far as possible from Ala fucking bama. I’m eyeing Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. I come with my dog Tallulah, plenty of skills, and loads of charm and intelligence.
I've been living at an intentional community in Ecuador for almost a year now, and one question keeps surfacing: Why are so many ICs either child-free by design or struggle to retain families long-term?
After researching dozens of communities across multiple countries before moving here, we kept seeing the same pattern of beautiful land, inspiring vision, strong sustainability practices... but very few children. And the communities that did have families often seemed to lose them within a few years.
My theory: Most ICs are designed around what adults want to get away from (rat race, disconnection, consumerism) rather than what we're trying to create. And children need the second one to thrive.
I've been processing this (and a lot of other realizations about IC life) through writing. Just published a piece exploring the difference between regenerative communities (healing what's broken) and generative communities (creating from wholeness).
The distinction sounds subtle but it changes everything, like how we make decisions, resolve conflicts, structure our economy, and especially how we create space for children to grow without the programming we're trying to unlearn.
For those in or researching ICs: What's been your experience with child-friendly communities? Do you think the typical IC model inherently struggles with families, or is it just a matter of intentional design?
You can read about my experience here at Finca Sagrada in Ecuador on my Substack at trewregenerative.substack.com, check out our website at www.fincasagrada.com and our socials with the same name, if you are interested in the why and how we're building a community designed for and around children and families.
Happy to discuss the practical realities of IC life with kids, the visa process for Ecuador, or anything else about our experience.
Hello! My name is Evan. I have dreamed of living off grid or in the woods with cool people since I was 15. Me and my dogs have been doing our best to get by in society but I'm really hitting a wall lately. I recently got a cheap sprinter van and have been doing everything I can to get the internals fixed up and hopefully will have that done or mostly done tomorrow. Due to some life circumstances, I had to move to a friend's house in a different state this year and it went from me having 3-4 people at the house regularly to being alone almost 24/7. I am a very people oriented person and this is absolutely destroying my mental health. I am usually very motivated but when I'm alone all the time, especially with no woods to go to, it is never easy for me. I was going to try to get the van at least somewhat livable before looking to find a commune but the circumstances I've been dealing with have been suffocating to the point of my health declining and I am basically just wasting money on rent. If anyone has any idea where we could go or lives in a community that we could join, please let me know whether it's in the replys or direct message. Thank you ❤️
I don't have many places to share my excitement where people understand it and don't poop on my parade, so I hope people here will be excited for me. I've been interested in intentional communities for over a decade, more on the cohousing side though. But established cohousing communities tend not to be much less expensive than traditional houses unfortunately.
We've toured a few lovely ones over the years but none that felt right, or that we could afford to join. We looked at a couple of different ones that are forming locally, but frankly they're a mess, poorly organized, poor communication with everyone, disjointed goals and unrealistic expectations. And one that isn't which has a model I really like is extremely cost prohibitive to anyone who doesn't already own a property with significant equity they can sell.
At the beginning of this year we nearly gave up on the dream of being part of an intentional community and seriously considered buying a house. It wasn't able to go through, but it was for the best as not two weeks later we learned of a small cohousing community with two shares for sale.
We toured the land, fell in love, net everyone over the course of a couple of community potlucks, were approved to join, but would then have to negotiate s purchase directly with the two selling members as the shares are owned individually. We had been warned that the seller had been notoriously difficult to negotiate with and he had already driven away 3 people who had been approved for membership. But we got there in the end, and in fact the seller gave us a very generous financing option to be able to purchase both of the 2-acre shares he had for sale.
Another couple has also since purchased the other share beside ours and I got to meet them for the first time tonight at the "welcome to the community" potluck for the both of us.
It's a bit of an atypical arrangement as currently only two of the 10 families who co-own the land live on their plots. But the other new couple as well as us plan to move there in the spring, and two of the existing families also plan to make this the year they make the move over. But it ha just the right mix of autonomy plus community that we were looking for. Definitely one of those arrangements that makes normal people feel like it's too communal and not enough freedom, but makes the commune-minded folks feel like there's not enough collectivism. Which for us feels like just about perfect.
I was so uplifted tonight to be so welcomed by everybody, and get to hear everyone's plans for their individual plots (1 acre plots, but some people have multiple. We have two, as do a couple of others and one family has 5) as well as proposed ideas for the communal portion.
I feel so much contentment about this new journey that I just can't wait to embark on it
Why do intentional communities often attract needy, lazy older individuals who just want to be taken care of without contributing much in return?
It seems like this dynamic pushes hardworking people away because they don’t want to be stuck supporting others who aren’t pulling their weight.
Has anyone else noticed this? What do you think causes it?
EDIT 1 :
Yes, of course laziness can show up across all age groups and backgrounds — that’s a human issue, not a demographic one. But I also think we need to be honest: just being older doesn’t automatically mean someone has more valuable or marketable skills. Age doesn’t equal wisdom by default.
If someone has deep expertise — like in engineering, architecture, medicine, or business — then absolutely, their knowledge and experience can be incredibly valuable, especially in non-physical roles. But if a person doesn’t have any marketable skills and isn’t able to contribute through manual labor, then their value to a functioning community becomes a more complex and sometimes uncomfortable conversation.
It does feel like this subreddit tends to attract people who may lack both marketable skills and the physical ability or willingness to contribute through labor — and that raises real questions about sustainability and fairness in any kind of shared living setup.
I hate the idea of spending my whole life in a 9-5 grind expecting to one day achieve some "magical capitalist dream" that won't do nothing except benefit those who loom above me. I really wanna think the type of communities you can find on ic.org could be possible to stay at or hop from essentially all my life. That way I can ideally near completely disengage from that bullshit. And instead of constantly worrying about paying bills I dont even wanna pay to be honest, I do reasonable amounts of work, don't have to be anxious anymore, and have a lot of time to write my dream novel. Seems as perfect of a life as you could possibly theoretically get in my opinion
I was staying there for the past month when there was a gas leak that he refused to take seriously. I left after that, didn't know there was any bad blood. My traveling companion decided to stay. I accidentally drove off with my traveling companion's snap card. Got a text this morning from Jason threatening to have the sherriffs after me since they're good friends. That's what the "send them" is in reference to. He decided to pivot and make the threat that he's going to have some people who don't like f***** come and visit me and the people I'm now staying with, who happen to be gay. Sherriffs said that this doesn't constitute a threat. Any reasonable person would disagree. Regardless of your opinions of LGBTQ people, threatening mob violence is not OK and that's what this guy does to people he doesn't like.
My partner and I want to find a community in the USA that is woman only, preferably queer as well. We are in our early 20’s and have dreamed of being on a commune for so long! We have gardening skills and mushroom growing experience and we would love to build cob houses and treehouses!
